Any H.P. Lovecraft Fans on Here?

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Lexingtongue

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My mate has been telling me for years that I should read some of his stuff but I've never got round to it. However, today I started listening to a BBC adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness on the BBC Sounds app (which I would highly recommend) and I got instantly sucked in by the Elder Things/Gods mythos. I fancy giving his stuff a go, but would like to discover more about Nyarlathotep and Azathoth and the like after what I listened to today. Any recommendations on where I should start and stories I really shouldn't miss or stuff by other authors on the subject?
 
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Lexingtongue said:
My mate has been telling me for years that I should read some of his stuff but I've never got round to it. However, today I started listening to a BBC adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness on the BBC Sounds app (which I would highly recommend) and I got instantly sucked in by the Elder Things/Gods mythos. I fancy giving his stuff a go, but would like to discover more about Nyarlathotep and Azathoth and the like after what I listened to today. Any recommendations on where I should start and stories I really shouldn't miss or stuff by other authors on the subject?
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Sadly died in poverty before his work was recognised.

His gothic New England tales are outstanding.
 
I read a lot of his stories in my early twenties when I was in a weird fiction phase. Call of Cthulhu is probably the best entry into the mythos but for me his best stories focus less on all the blind idiot gods and just go for the atmosphere, such as Colour Out of Space or Music of Erich Zann.

Prior warning: there's a lot of racism.
 
cauldbairn said:
I read a lot of his stories in my early twenties when I was in a weird fiction phase. Call of Cthulhu is probably the best entry into the mythos but for me his best stories focus less on all the blind idiot gods and just go for the atmosphere, such as Colour Out of Space or Music of Erich Zann.

Prior warning: there's a lot of racism.
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Do you know what he called his cat?
 
The Color out of space and the mountains of madness were his best works imho. However dreams in the witch house gets a close second. To this day when my dad and I stay in a hotel and we have something dodgy to eat, my dad says he has a touch of the 'Brown Jenkins'
 
Lexingtongue said:
My mate has been telling me for years that I should read some of his stuff but I've never got round to it. However, today I started listening to a BBC adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness on the BBC Sounds app (which I would highly recommend) and I got instantly sucked in by the Elder Things/Gods mythos. I fancy giving his stuff a go, but would like to discover more about Nyarlathotep and Azathoth and the like after what I listened to today. Any recommendations on where I should start and stories I really shouldn't miss or stuff by other authors on the subject?
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Yes
Lexingtongue said:
Do you know what he called his cat?
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Yes....but I've just had a warning.
 
Yankee Mackem said:
The Color out of space and the mountains of madness were his best works imho. However dreams in the witch house gets a close second. To this day when my dad and I stay in a hotel and we have something dodgy to eat, my dad says he has a touch of the 'Brown Jenkins'
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My favs are The Shadow Out of Time and The Haunter of the Dark.
 
Lexingtongue said:
My mate has been telling me for years that I should read some of his stuff but I've never got round to it. However, today I started listening to a BBC adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness on the BBC Sounds app (which I would highly recommend) and I got instantly sucked in by the Elder Things/Gods mythos. I fancy giving his stuff a go, but would like to discover more about Nyarlathotep and Azathoth and the like after what I listened to today. Any recommendations on where I should start and stories I really shouldn't miss or stuff by other authors on the subject?
Click to expand...

Yes. Big fan.

Before you jump in you probably need some background/context. He was born in Providence New England late C19th to an old New England family. As a young boy his father was detained in the Butler County Asylum with Syphillitic insanity, leaving HPL to look after his black labrador n*gg*r. His father never came home.

His mother (also insane with syphiliis) insisted that he was home schooled by his racist grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips, an obsessive bigot who believed that the emancipation of the slaves had been a bad thing, and so had the American Revolution, He wanted America to re-join the British Empire

His mother dressed him in his dead, mad father's clothes, and forebade him to have friends. He had lots of pen pals, including Robert Bloch who based the character of Norman Bates on HPL's relationship with his mad mother. His mother also died in the Butler County Asylum, which HPL used as the inspiration for Arkham Asylum

Any of this stories from his period will reflect HPL's racist upbringing

With his mother dead HPL moved to Red Hook in Brooklyn, where he married a Jewish immigrant. His views changed a lot in this period, and he becomes more conventionally liberal. Some of his books do still play on racist ideas of miscegenation - Horror of Red Hook, Shadow Over Innsmouth. If you want to understand how a nation of immigrants hates immigrants HPLs tales from this period are a good starting point

His marriage breaks down and he moves back to Providence, where he lives with a sickly aunt in poverty. He becomes increasingly critical of American Conservatism in this stage of life. His only longer work "Mountains of Madness" is published which earns him some money. One of this other pen pals Robert Howard (Author of Conan) wrote to him complaining of depression, HPLs return letter was so grim that Howard shot himself with a shotgun.

Both he and his aunt are diagnosed with cancer. The royalties for MofM were only enough to buy one course of treatment and he chose his aunt over himself. He died aged 46 of bowl cancer - the cancer destroyed his ability to absorb nutrition and he starved to death.

Have fun!
Lexingtongue said:
Can you recommend anything, mate?
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Mountains of Madness, Dreams in the WitchHouse, Rats in the Wall, Call of Cthulhu, Shadow Over Innsmouth
 
Lankester Merrin said:
Yes. Big fan.

Before you jump in you probably need some background/context. He was born in Providence New England late C19th to an old New England family. As a young boy his father was detained in the Butler County Asylum with Syphillitic insanity, leaving HPL to look after his black labrador n*gg*r. His father never came home.

His mother (also insane with syphiliis) insisted that he was home schooled by his racist grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips, an obsessive bigot who believed that the emancipation of the slaves had been a bad thing, and so had the American Revolution, He wanted America to re-join the British Empire

His mother dressed him in his dead, mad father's clothes, and forebade him to have friends. He had lots of pen pals, including Robert Bloch who based the character of Norman Bates on HPL's relationship with his mad mother. His mother also died in the Butler County Asylum, which HPL used as the inspiration for Arkham Asylum

Any of this stories from his period will reflect HPL's racist upbringing

With his mother dead HPL moved to Red Hook in Brooklyn, where he married a Jewish immigrant. His views changed a lot in this period, and he becomes more conventionally liberal. Some of his books do still play on racist ideas of miscegenation - Horror of Red Hook, Shadow Over Innsmouth. If you want to understand how a nation of immigrants hates immigrants HPLs tales from this period are a good starting point

His marriage breaks down and he moves back to Providence, where he lives with a sickly aunt in poverty. He becomes increasingly critical of American Conservatism in this stage of life. His only longer work "Mountains of Madness" is published which earns him some money. One of this other pen pals Robert Howard (Author of Conan) wrote to him complaining of depression, HPLs return letter was so grim that Howard shot himself with a shotgun.

Both he and his aunt are diagnosed with cancer. The royalties for MofM were only enough to buy one course of treatment and he chose his aunt over himself. He died aged 46 of bowl cancer - the cancer destroyed his ability to absorb nutrition and he starved to death.

Have fun!


Mountains of Madness, Dreams in the WitchHouse, Rats in the Wall, Call of Cthulhu, Shadow Over Innsmouth
Click to expand...
Surprisingly, I know quite a bit about his past without ever really reading him. I think I've come across two of his short stories in collections, one of which was the cat one mentioned earlier. I think...
 
Lexingtongue said:
Surprisingly, I know quite a bit about his past without ever really reading him. I think I've come across two of his short stories in collections, one of which was the cat one mentioned earlier. I think...
Click to expand...

He had a massive influence on cinema and later horror writers, so most people are familiar with him. It's just hard for me to recommend a writer with such immense racist baggage without explaining first
 
Lankester Merrin said:
Yes. Big fan.

Before you jump in you probably need some background/context. He was born in Providence New England late C19th to an old New England family. As a young boy his father was detained in the Butler County Asylum with Syphillitic insanity, leaving HPL to look after his black labrador n*gg*r. His father never came home.

His mother (also insane with syphiliis) insisted that he was home schooled by his racist grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips, an obsessive bigot who believed that the emancipation of the slaves had been a bad thing, and so had the American Revolution, He wanted America to re-join the British Empire

His mother dressed him in his dead, mad father's clothes, and forebade him to have friends. He had lots of pen pals, including Robert Bloch who based the character of Norman Bates on HPL's relationship with his mad mother. His mother also died in the Butler County Asylum, which HPL used as the inspiration for Arkham Asylum

Any of this stories from his period will reflect HPL's racist upbringing

With his mother dead HPL moved to Red Hook in Brooklyn, where he married a Jewish immigrant. His views changed a lot in this period, and he becomes more conventionally liberal. Some of his books do still play on racist ideas of miscegenation - Horror of Red Hook, Shadow Over Innsmouth. If you want to understand how a nation of immigrants hates immigrants HPLs tales from this period are a good starting point

His marriage breaks down and he moves back to Providence, where he lives with a sickly aunt in poverty. He becomes increasingly critical of American Conservatism in this stage of life. His only longer work "Mountains of Madness" is published which earns him some money. One of this other pen pals Robert Howard (Author of Conan) wrote to him complaining of depression, HPLs return letter was so grim that Howard shot himself with a shotgun.

Both he and his aunt are diagnosed with cancer. The royalties for MofM were only enough to buy one course of treatment and he chose his aunt over himself. He died aged 46 of bowl cancer - the cancer destroyed his ability to absorb nutrition and he starved to death.

Have fun!


Mountains of Madness, Dreams in the WitchHouse, Rats in the Wall, Call of Cthulhu, Shadow Over Innsmouth
Click to expand...
It wasn't Lovecraft's letter that drove Howard to suicide - it was his Mother's imminent death, he had also threatened suicide several times previously.
 

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